


When you go, what you leave is a work of art (On my chest, on my heart)

by TheBoyWhoWalksInTheLight



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Angst, Death of a loved one, F/M, Heartbreak, Reveal fic (sorta)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 12:19:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3728704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBoyWhoWalksInTheLight/pseuds/TheBoyWhoWalksInTheLight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new body is brought into the morgue. Henry's reaction is unexpected and very concerning to his coworkers.</p><p>'Henry nods as Lucas pulls the tray out. And everything stops.<br/>Blood becomes daggers of ice that stab every part of his body. An unidentified cataclysmic event explodes from beneath his breast bone. Someone came and stole the colour away from every object in the room.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	When you go, what you leave is a work of art (On my chest, on my heart)

**Author's Note:**

> The title was taken from The Paper Kites' song 'Featherstone'.
> 
> This work was based on this prompt: http://darklyndsea.tumblr.com/post/115338041879/i-was-just-thinking-about-the-very-real
> 
> Please enjoy! :)

“Good morning, Lucas!” Henry calls as he breezes through the morgue.

Lucas’s eyebrows sew themselves to the sky. “Good morning, Doc,” he returns dubiously. “What’s got you in such a good mood?”

“Nothing,” his reply is cheerful. “I simply seem to have found my zest for life this morning.”

The morgue is brighter this morning. Henry. Its Henry’s fault.

“Who’ve we got first, Lucas?” he asks, snapping his gloves on.

“A Jane Doe,” he reads from the clipboard in his hands. “Says she was found on a bench overlooking the East river.”

The East river: a strange spot for this time of year; quite cold. He would know – he had crawled out of that same river many a time on a brisk November morning.

Henry nods as Lucas pulls the tray out. And everything stops.

Blood becomes daggers of ice that stab every part of his body. An unidentified cataclysmic event explodes from beneath his breast bone. Someone came and stole the colour away from every object in the room.

Lucas continues talking, eyes fixed upon the clipboard. “Suspected death from old age, but it was requested that we check it out just in case. I called Jo down so that we can begin working on identifying her and –"

“No.”                                                                  

Lucas finally glances up from his clipboard, “No?”

Henry is adrift. He is floating up into the galaxy. He is becoming a supernova.

“That won’t be necessary. Excuse me, I must make a call.” Legs had turned into lead balloons; sailing but heavy _heavyheavy_.

The receiver feels foreign. The receiver anchors him. “Abe? It’s Abigail.”

He’s no longer untethered. Instead, roiling earthquakes consume his body. Wave after wave. His bones shatter, fissures form on his skin, magma churns and spurts out his eyes, muscles snap.

His arms are clutched in front of him, holding himself together, making him smaller unto oblivion; if he doesn’t exist, how can this exist?

AbigailAbigailAbigailAbigail _AbigailI._ Her name reverberates in his mind, overlapping, syllables becoming murky, becoming gibberish.

Never before had Henry loved someone so deeply as Abigail. Abigail brought a meaning to his life that had been absent for the years before. She brought a renewal, but she left a gaping hole where his chest used to be. He had returned to how he felt before, as if he carried the whole sorry world upon his back.

The earthquakes last for days, years. The magma hardens (for now); his spine is made of mountains. Stiff, rigid, formidable. He becomes a pillar of stone – impenetrable. Everything is stone except his eyes, red as they are.

An about turn and he marches – even steps, _leftrightleftright_ – into the inquisitive light and the brittle air of the sterile room beyond his office, coming face to face with two sets of concerned eyes. Lucas and Jo.

Lucas looks down immediately, pretending to have not seen for how dare he be so bold as to worry about his co-worker and friend? Jo does not pretend. She doesn’t smile like everything will be alright; she doesn’t lie. She studies him with a watchful gaze, sincere in her concern.

“I cannot perform this autopsy,” he proclaims in the most authoritative voice he can muster, throwing it across the room.

She lifts her chin in an assessing manner. “You can identify this woman?” she asks. She knows Henry well now. She knows Henry would never answer her very very many questions.

Lucas has looked back up, shirking his ruse in favour of his curiosity.

Henry can feel the burden of unanswered questions, tugging on his skin voraciously. Making it fit too small and too big; baggy and folded at the ankles and stretched tightly around his face.

The sharp lines of the morgue are sure to cut him deeply if he were to get too close; he pulls in on himself, folding down into the one place that is safe – the memory of Abigail in their best days (kisses of red and the smile she stole from the moon, if anyone were to ask).

Forcing himself back to the morgue, his voice rings out clearly despite his hushed tone, so little life in the room to absorb his noise, “Yes – yes, I – “

With great relief, he is cut off by the noisy entrance of Abe whose presence clatters over every surface, finally restoring the colour. “Henry, I got here as fast as I could.”

“Thank you, Abe,” finally forming a full sentence, steadied by the proximity of his son. Abe makes his way over to stand by Henry’s side as two soldiers – brothers in arms, father and son – preparing to face a battle.

As a steadying motion, Henry grasps Abe’s hand tightly in his own and brings it to his mouth in a fatherly kiss. Abe’s smile is a sun shower.

They step towards the open drawer, united as one, their features steeped in determination. Jo turns to Abe with an unreadable expression on her face, studying them both with great intensity, her gaze attempting to rifle through their brains – attempting to understand.

“You knew this woman too?”

“She was my mother,” Abe states simply. Jo does well concealing her surprise. Of course – she’s a detective.

“What was her name?” she pushes gently.

Henry closes his eyes for a moment to garner strength, knowing what is coming. His heart thrums to the beat of a thousand _very annoyingly_ out of time drummers.

 “Abigail Morgan.” Abe’s voice digs a hole around Henry, sinking him deep within the Earth. Regret piles upon his shoulders – regret for confiding her name to Jo, regret for his secrets, his life.

He wishes in that moment for fearlessness – to be honest, to not expect the worst of others, to live his life freely. He wishes for an easy life where he can love one woman with all his heart and grow old as his son grows up. He may not have lived a fearless life, nor an easy life, but for this moment, he can be fearless. He lifts his chin high, unashamed to have loved a woman who could find life at a death camp, a woman fearless when he was not. To take on Henry’s curse of free choice.

As expected, Jo’s eyes latch onto him, digging deep, exposing every secret he’s ever had.

“. . .Abigail,” she murmurs disbelievingly as her tries brain performs the acrobatics necessary to understand. “Abigail as in . . . _Abigail_?” she asks more pointedly.

All the stone in Henry’s body has moved to his chin, tugging it down in an exaggerated nod.

“What? What do you mean?” Lucas jumps in like a confused puppy, feeling very desperately out of the loop. His eyes fix on Henry as well. His two coworkers flooding him with an unexpectedly welcome light.

Henry turns to Abe with a piece of the smile Abigail stole from the moon glowing from his chest. Abe’s nod is barely discernible from the fluttering of a butterfly’s wing but it cracks a schism in his stone skin.

He turns back and his eyes meet the searchlights head on.

“I believe I have a story to tell.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, let me know what you thought! :) Feedback is much appreciated.


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